FOR years you worked on your book. You wrote, you learned, you got lost and found your way, you persevered. During that time—maybe after writing sessions, while waiting for your coffee to brew or checking for a response on that short story in Submittable—you scrolled through your feed, or leafed through this magazine, and saw book prize announcements. You imagined one day seeing your name among the winners. Now your manuscript is finally ready. It is time to get it out of your hard drive and into the world. But how does a manuscript transform from a prized possession to a prize winner? Is a small press book contest the right path for you? Here are some factors to consider in sizing up contests, along with what prize-winning authors have to say about their experiences.
The process of submitting to a small press book contest is straight-forward, often similar to that of sending a single poem or story to a journal: You’ll fill out a short form on an online submission platform like Submittable, upload your manuscript, pay any necessary fee, and wait for the results. In contrast, when approaching a big press, you typically first have to find representation from an agent. Querying agents might connect you with representation fast, but it often can take months or even years—and after an agent agrees to represent you, they may recommend additional changes (creating additional months of work) before they will submit the book to editors.
“I didn’t realize how long that process would take,” says Rajiv Mohabir about trying to navigate the commercial publishing landscape (2016), winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, (2021), winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, and other books, Mohabir had already built a career before finding the right agent. In Mohabir’s primary genre, poetry, small press contests are a common path to publication, while a major press is rarer. “The prose world is so vastly different from poetry—at least as far as publishing is concerned,” he notes. “For poetry it feels like the only way to get a first book out there is to send to competitions and to open reading periods.”
